Chinese in New Mexico? has often been the initial reaction when I
mention what I'm researching. But it shouldn't be surprising, and not just
because New Mexico is a multicultural place today. Even if we just look at
Hollywood stereotypes of the Western frontier, there's the proverbial Chinese
cook. (There was Bonanza's Hop Sing, for example.) Though let's get to the real
world...

A browse through local histories shows how the Chinese cook was a staple in
a white Californian Victorian household's staff. A turn-of-the-century San
Francisco Chinatown merchant, Wong Taw, in 1916 published the volume known as
the Fat Ming Cookbook, a guide to Western recipes and cooking
techniques printed in side-by-side English and Chinese. (There's an article
about it in Gastronomica.)

What about New Mexico?

The Silver City Museum has shared this preview of a 1913 photo "of a small
girl and boy, and two men, ...standing in front of a ranch house constructed of
adobe and rock." The handwritten caption below the photo reads "Ranch House
and Chinese Cook." Click on over and you can see it. (Pogson Collection;
no. 02555).

Here's another indication, from the Want Ads, someone who wants a "First
class cook immediately... Japanese, Chinese, or Filipino preferred...."

This ad happens to be from the El Paso Herald (1917), and we see that
although it's a Texas newspaper, the Want Ads include also advertisements for
positions in Arizona and New Mexico.

Check out the ad just above the ad for the first-class cook: Someone in
Santa Rosa, New Mexico, wants an "expert gardener," "Japanese or Chinese
preferred." The expertise of Japanese and Chinese American horticulturalists
was something known then. More on this later.

A casual glance through photo collections at the Palace of the Governors
will show us a window into the experience of Chinese in urban areas of New
Mexico. Click through the thumbnail below to see the pic:

You clicked through to see the image, yes? Is it not one of the most suave
19th-century New Mexico portraits you've seen? There's so many questions raised
by this picture. What was 1880s Las Vegas like? What sort of opportunities were
there for a Chinese or Chinese American? Was this guy Lee Chin famous? Is this
his suit? His friend's, or maybe part of the formal portrait setup? That's
quite a watch fob and ring. He looks so comfortable in the outfit -- which
includes one of the most prodigious double-windsors ever seen in neckwear --
that I'm inclined to think it's his. The date is estimated at 1885 -- does he
wear a braided queue wound up under that hat? Is this the only portrait of a
Chinese American made by the Crispell Art Parlor? Glancing at another
commercial portrait, it looks like the photographer for Crispell had some
good technique, and Peter Palmquist (in his essay
"In Splendid Detail") noted a professional portraiture market among 19th
century Chinese Americans who were connoisseurs of good photographic technique.
How many images from the Crispell Art Parlor have survived and are accessible
in public collections?

And then there's miners. Gold and silver mining booms attached people from
all over the country and the world; why not Chinese?

Again, click through the thumbnail below to see the pic at the Palace of the
Governors Photo Archives of the New Mexico History Museum:

From another collection, this time part of the 580 digitized photographs by
J. C. Burge, from the Black Range Museum Collection at the Palace of the
Governors, again mainly studio portraits, and thought to be of the same time
period. This Chinese man of the "mine area of
Hillsboro and Kingston" wears more traditional dress, and appears to be
wearing the traditional shaved-forehead and braided queue hairstyle:

(Click through thumbnail to view.)

With an almost iconic look, he looks so familiar. As if I've seen him on the
cover of a book, or otherwise featured in a publication. Does anyone recognize
this photo?

Even just in a few portrait collections, there's so much testimony already
to Chinese heritage of New Mexico. Let's see what else we can find!

This blog is to share emerging research I'm uncovering as a 2014 New Mexico
History Scholar. This is an award given to my research proposal by the
University of New Mexico Center for Regional Studies Director Tobías Durán, the
Office of the State Historian, and the Historical Society of New
Mexico.

I am researching into the Chinese heritage of New Mexico. In part this is
due to the encouragement of my mentor,
Philip P. Choy. Among Phil's many accomplishments in research and
historic preservation, he and Him Mark
Lai, another mentor I was fortunate to do projects under, developed and
team-taught the first-ever courses on the
Chinese heritage of California. (Given the success of their work, it can be
hard to image there was ever a time when the Chinese American history in
California was overlooked and discounted.)

Until recently, I lived in the Bay Area, in Oakland, California. That's
(mainly) where I studied Chinese, as my dissertation advisor L. Ling-chi Wang
noted that if I was going to research California history, I had better learn
Chinese. (It was a good idea.) Before working for Stanford University as a
processing and reference archivist, I served for a number of years as the
director of archives and exhibitions of the Chinese Historical Society of
America in San Francisco, and completed a number of research and exhibition
projects in this area. The flagship exhibit I originated for them and launched
in a partnership with the Judicial Historical Society of the Northern District
of California in 2007 is today still touring the US. Under the mentorship of
Philip P. Choy, Him Mark Lai, and the amazing scholar Connie Young Yu, I served as the
lead curator for The Chinese of California, the first-ever
collaborative exhibition of the Bancroft Library, the California Historical
Society, and the Chinese Historical Society of America. The California
Historical Society, the host venue, reported this exhibition set an all-time
attendance record for them.

The dissertation I completed for the University of California, Berkeley,
"Racialization Processes, Land, and Policy in the Context of California’s
Chinese Exclusion Movements, 1850 to 1910 –- History and Archaeology of the
Chinatowns and Early Development of Sacramento, San Jose, Los Angeles,
Riverside, and Oakland, California," is currently under revision for
publication.

One characteristic shared by the scholars I was fortunate enough to work
with is that they always made their contributions in scholarship and in the
real world. They made their work matter.

I'm excited at getting into the archives here and uncovering materials
related to the Chinese heritage of New Mexico.

I'll be giving a talk this summer for the Santa Fe Opera, and this fall for
the Maxwell Museum. In the meantime, I'll be sharing some findings here.
Hope to see you around.